


the word of the dreamer

by Singofsolace



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Memory Loss, Nightmares, Picnics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 10:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25469065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Singofsolace/pseuds/Singofsolace
Summary: Mary Wardwell and Zelda Spellman have a picnic. Mary confides in Zelda about her nightmares.
Relationships: Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith
Comments: 20
Kudos: 55





	the word of the dreamer

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place between Part Two and Part Three, when Mary is still on sick leave. It's the the spring of 1971 (which I decided based on the fact that Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" was published in 1970). The title is borrowed from that very same book: “But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer.” Also, there are some outdated “rules” regarding female teachers at Baxter High; I swear it used to be a thing that female teachers weren’t allowed to marry while they were employed at a school. It was very much a choice between having a career and having a husband, once upon a time.
> 
> The prompt was to write Spellwell Hurt/Comfort plus a little fluff. Please let me know how I did!
> 
> Disclaimer: While it seems a bit silly to credit Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa as the owner of these characters and this universe, considering he himself stole/borrowed/recreated them, let's give it a go. I do not own these characters, nor the universe in which they live. They belong to Archie Comics, which sent Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa himself a cease and desist for his blatant fanfic-turned-play, "Archie's Weird Fantasy," not too long ago. Please do not sue me; I am an unemployed adjunct professor writing fanfiction purely for entertainment purposes. I have very little money, but a whole lot of love for complicated female characters. While I do not wish to be sued, I would very much enjoy being given a position as show-runner for writing some great fanfic. I eagerly await your email.

Mary forgets.

She knows she forgets.

Everywhere she looks, there’s another sign that there are months missing from her mind. There are Easter displays in each and every shop window (when she knows for a fact there has not yet been Thanksgiving or Christmas), spring flowers blooming where there should be a deep frost, and for some reason entirely unknown to her, the masculine population of Greendale has been paying her far more notice lately (of a distinctly inappropriate nature) than ever before.

It’s strange. Strange to be stopped on the street and congratulated for rising to a position at the high school she neither merited nor wanted. Strange to have confused young faces crowd her favorite table at Dr. Cerberus’ to ask if she’s feeling any better. Strange to be told of what she’s done in the last five months, but have not a single concrete memory to reassure her the person is telling the truth.

It’s strange to remember having forgotten.

“Miss Wardwell?”

Mary nearly jumps out of her skin at the unexpected voice, but relaxes when she sees it’s only Miss Spellman delivering her soup and sandwich.

“Yes, thank you,” Mary answers, guiding the food down to the spot in front of her and taking in its delicious aroma.

“You look a bit knackered, if you don’t mind me sayin’, love,” Hilda says, the London lilt to her voice oddly soothing to Mary in its foreignness.

Mary picks up her spoon. Ever since she’d woken from her fugue state—or whatever it was—she’s been absolutely ravenous. “Normally, I _would_ mind, but seeing as you brought me my favorite soup, all is forgiven.”

Hilda nods. Mary lifts the soup to her lips, expecting the woman to walk away and tend to the other guests, but she just stands there staring.

“Was there something else?” says Mary, mournfully returning the spoon to her soup, as it was too hot to eat without burning her tongue.

“I was just thinkin’,” says Hilda, her eyes twinkling. “You look like you could use a bit of company.”

That was exactly what Mary _didn’t_ want these days.

“No, thank you,” she replies, as politely as she can. “I much prefer to be on my own.”

Hilda chuckles. “I know someone else just like that. I think it’d do you both some good to be alone together.”

Mary’s brow furrows. “How can we be alone _together_?”

“Tell ya what,” says Hilda, her expression bright with excitement. “How ‘bout I pack you a yummy picnic basket?”

“What?” says Mary, flinching back against the booth as Hilda invades her space to take her untouched plate away.

“It’s a beautiful day—and by the looks of you, you haven’t been outside in donkey’s years. You ought to have a picnic down by the lake, and I know just the person to keep you company.”

“Really, Miss Spellman, I think I’d prefer a quiet lunch— _alone_ —”

“Sit tight, love,” says Hilda, ignoring Mary as she makes her way back to the kitchen. “I won’t be a minute.”

* * *

Zelda Spellman can’t remember the last time Hilda suggested having a picnic by the lake. Truly, if ever there had been a time where she and her sister would bring a blanket and some food out to sit in full view of mortals, she can’t recall it.

But Hilda has asked for so little in the wake of Faustus’ poisoning of their entire coven, and has done so much to keep the morale of the coven up… Zelda feels she owes it to her little sister to do this small thing as a gesture of good will—and if it gets her out of the overcrowded mortuary for an afternoon, all the better.

But when Zelda arrives at the place Hilda had identified for a nice picnic lunch, she is completely stunned to discover the mysterious Miss Wardwell, rather than her sister, looking quite mystified herself with picnic basket in hand.

“Excuse me? Are you… are you Zelda?” says Mary, shuffling her feet on the uneven ground.

“I am,” Zelda says, placing her hand on her hip and cocking her head.

Zelda’s not really dressed for a picnic—her red dress with gold leaf design down the middle is not what she would’ve chosen this morning if she’d known her sister would make this request of her—but Miss Wardwell looks no better prepared, in her green tights and tartan skirt.

“Your… your sister suggested… I don’t know _why_ she did—b-but she thought it might be nice if—if we… had lunch?” says Mary, stumbling over her words before gaining a bit more confidence, “Apparently, we’re both ‘pale as ghosts’ from lack of sun and proper food—or s-so she said,” Mary adds, not wanting to offend her.

Distracted by a bird landing on the lake, Zelda walks down to the edge of the lake, crossing her arms as she observes a second bird—perhaps its mate—swiftly follow.

“May I be frank with you, Miss Wardwell?” says Zelda, tensing up as Mary comes to stand beside her.

“Of course!” says Mary, jostling the food inside the basket as she awkwardly gesticulates with her hands.

Zelda’s eyes narrow while she watches the lovebirds preen themselves as well as each other. She longs to cast a spell to break up the romantic display, though she knows doing magic in front of a mortal is a risk she can’t afford to take these days—especially a mortal who has already been killed and brought back to life by a witch.

“I’ve just ended a rather…terrible chapter of my life. I was married, you see, for a brief time, and it…” Zelda shudders a bit, closing her eyes against the phantom brush of Faustus’ fingers against her cheek. “…it didn’t end well. My sister is under the entirely _incorrect_ impression that I need… companionship… to move on.”

Mary’s stomach drops as, without her permission, her mind draws up cruel images of what Zelda might be implying by the heaviness of her words. In Greendale, the only way a woman could seek a legal divorce was on the basis of adultery or abuse, and somehow Mary sensed it wasn’t adultery that had put the stiffness in Zelda’s spine and the shadows beneath her eyes.

Knowing she ought to say something, rather than just stand there imagining some awful man possibly putting his hands on the woman in front of her, she stutters, “I-I had no idea! I’m sorry. I’ll just… I guess I’ll just go back and—and return the basket to your sister, then.”

Mary only has time to take a few steps before Zelda’s low voice stops her.

“No.”

“No?” echoes Mary, flustered as Zelda unexpectedly turns and moves into her space to relieve her of the picnic basket.

“I haven’t eaten a thing all day, and I suspect you’re hungry as well—I’m certain I heard your stomach growl a moment ago.”

Mary flushes with embarrassment as Zelda places the basket on the ground and immediately produces a blanket to spread out against the uneven, damp grass.

“I suppose I am… hungry,” says Mary uncertainly as Zelda continues to unpack the basket, item by item, with almost comical haste, as if she were afraid if she paused for even a moment, she’d think better of it.

“Then sit,” says Zelda, gesturing to the spot on the blanket beside her. “There’s far too much food here for me to eat alone.”

* * *

At first, the conversation is slow-going. They eat in relative silence, both staring at the lake and only turning to one another to occasionally comment on the quality of Hilda’s food.

“This is… nice,” Mary eventually says, after finishing her third cucumber sandwich. Sticking the tip of her tongue out of the corner of her mouth, she tastes some sauce remaining on her lips, and quickly dabs at it daintily with a napkin instead.

“Hold on—” says Zelda, reaching out with her own napkin in her right hand before taking Mary’s chin in her left. Mary’s face flushes with heat as Zelda wipes away a bit of sauce that she’d missed. “There.”

Zelda doesn’t immediately pull away. For a moment, they just sit there, legs folded beneath them as Zelda leans into Mary’s space.

“Th-Thank you,” says Mary, her eyes dropping without her permission to Zelda’s painted lips.

Zelda reels back, the electricity of the moment ending like a sudden clap of thunder. She immediately picks up her glass and takes a large swig, disappointed when the sparkling apple cider does nothing to calm her nerves like real champagne would.

Mary’s eyes flicker from Zelda’s left hand curled around her drink—which is conspicuously absent of a wedding or engagement ring—to her own ring finger. She’d never been one for wearing rings, and besides, Baxter High was very traditional, in the sense that most women who were hired by Principal Hawthorne, Sr., were told in no uncertain terms that there were to be no men hanging around the school—except, of course, the ones who taught there—and that the morality code strictly forbade women to continue to teach if they were to become married. That was part of the reason she expected her engagement to go on indefinitely—she hardly wanted to have to give up teaching before she was ready.

But Adam’s engagement ring was currently burning a hole in her jewelry box, as she had no idea how it had come to be there. Surely, he would have _told_ her if he’d called off the engagement…? She’d combed through all of his letters, and yet, she could find no indication that anything out of the ordinary had happened. Though one of her students had mentioned in passing that she’d brought a man to the Valentine’s Day dance…

It would seem she had “forgotten” that as well.

“Miss Wardwell?” says Zelda, the plastic champagne flute pressed against her cheek, as if hoping to cool the skin there.

“Yes? And please—call me Mary,” she adds, taking off her glasses to rub them clean on the soft fabric of her shirt, if only to have something to distract her from Zelda’s enchanting presence.

“I hear you’ve taken some time off from teaching—is that true?” asks Zelda, green eyes soft with something bordering on pity.

“Well… yes,” says Mary, replacing her glasses carefully on the bridge of her nose. “I’ve accrued a lot of sick time in nearly thirty years of teaching, you see, and…”

“You don’t have to explain,” says Zelda, shaking her head. This makes her red curls swing delightfully from side to side—not that Mary is looking.

“But I feel as though I must,” says Mary, picking up her own glass of sparkling apple cider to keep her hands busy. “You see, I’ve been having… nightmares.”

Zelda’s face loses some of its color at that. “Nightmares?”

“Yes,” says Mary, taking a large sip of her drink. “They’re terrible. In one, I’m reaching into my abdomen with bare hands and unspooling my intestines. Sometimes it ends with me ripping out my own rib—it’s all very Biblical!”

Zelda nods, tilting her head. “Yes, it is.”

The woman’s voice and expression are oddly not as surprised or disgusted as Mary would expect them to be, but Mary nevertheless carries on, grateful to be able to talk about this with someone who isn’t a doctor waiting for her to finish her story to be able to dismiss her words as a product of female hysteria.

“Other times, I’m driving in the rain and I hit…” Mary trails off.

“You hit… what?” says Zelda, brushing a fingertip across her forehead to nudge the hair that’s resting there out of her face and behind her ear.

The breath rushes out of Mary’s lungs, remembering the way the brakes of her car screeched as it spun, just narrowly missing whatever had stumbled out onto the road. Then it all goes black—despite her doctors insisting there was no medical evidence to suggest she’d suffered any head trauma that would account for her memory loss.

“Mary?”

A soft hand brushes her knee. Looking up, Mary feels a bit lightheaded at the empathy and understanding in her eyes.

“I hit… I think I hit someone,” says Mary, gasping for breath. “I think I got in a car accident, but I can’t _remember_ —”

“Mary, please, just breathe,” says Zelda as she rubs her thumb soothingly over Mary’s knee.

“It was raining. I remember the rain. I can still see it— _smell_ it—”

Just then, dark clouds roll in overhead. The temperature drops from a pleasant day for a spring picnic to a freezing chill.

“Lilith preserve us,” she hears Zelda mutter beneath her breath, before hurrying to pack everything up.

By the time Mary comes back to her senses, accepting that the weather had turned on a dime at the precise moment she mentioned the rain in her nightmares, Zelda has already finished returning everything to the picnic basket, except for the blanket.

“Mary, I’m sorry, but it seems our lunch is going to be cut short,” says Zelda as she stands, offering Mary a hand to help her up.

Mary looks up at Zelda, slightly in awe of her as she spots the dark clouds just over their heads. “But… there was no rain in the forecast…? The new weatherman might not be as good as Dr. Cee was, but even he wouldn’t get it _this_ wrong, surely?”

Not waiting for Mary to take her hand, Zelda gently takes Mary under her elbows and lifts her up. “You know as well as anyone, Miss Wardwell, that Greendale is no ordinary town.”

Something flashes in Zelda’s eyes, then, but before Mary can question it, the sky opens up above them. The rain is harsh and bitterly cold against her skin as Zelda ushers her off the blanket and shoves that, too, unceremoniously into the picnic basket. The lake, which had been clear as glass only a few moments ago, is now an ominous black color.

“I’m afraid this is where we must say goodbye,” says Zelda, slinging the basket over her shoulder.

“But… but you _walked_ here. Please, let me drive you—” begins Mary, but her words are stopped by Zelda’s finger against her lips.

Slowly, so as not to spook her, Zelda takes her finger away and then leans in to brush a gentle kiss against Mary’s cheek. “Thank you for having lunch with me. I wish you peaceful dreams tonight."

A curious sensation falls over Mary, then, as Zelda whispers something that sounds suspiciously like Latin into her ear, and then…

And then Zelda is gone.


End file.
